I CANNOT, sadly, say I am hugely surprised that the trolls have once again fastened their fangs on the McCanns.

The couple’s situation is meat and drink to this ghoulish e-crew, something to get off on and feed off. They crave blood.

But what has shocked me more are the otherwise ordinary people who seem to want Kate and Gerry slung in the stocks and pelted with rotten eggs – or at the very least charged with neglect and imprisoned – because they left their kids home alone in a holiday apartment a few short yards from where they were eating.

Fine. Maybe, just maybe, they should have got a pizza and a bottle of wine in instead.

I might not have left the children … but glass houses and stones. I’m sure the vast majority of us have, at some point in our kids’ lives, behaved in a way which, on reflection, was not entirely sensible.

Such as James Bulger’s mum, Denise, momentarily losing track of her son in a shopping centre.

Or – hands up – me, bunging my six-month-old baby in her pram in the garden and asking a neighbour to keep an ear out for her while I went off to the supermarket … and finding a cat almost suffocating her when I got back.

Unlike the McCanns and Mrs Bulger, most of us get away with it.

As did all the other couples with kids tucked up in bed and to whom nothing bad happened, as they sat around their table with the McCanns in the tapas bar on that night six years ago in Praia da Luz.

So I cannot, for the life of me, understand the motivation of those who so virulently attack Gerry and Kate.

What kind of a kick do they get out of their holier, better than thou – or at least holier and better than the McCanns – sanctimonious rants?

And as they ring the phone-ins or log in to the chatrooms and drip their bile, do they really believe the McCanns haven’t endlessly beaten themselves up over all the ifs, buts and might have beens?

Nothing they say or write will have surpassed that of which Kate and Gerry have accused themselves. Over and over.

Anyone who saw them on Monday night cannot doubt not only their grief but their feelings of guilt. How could they not, endlessly, replay all those if onlys?

It haunts them. Having watched in particular Kate’s stricken face on Crimewatch on Monday night, it haunts me too. How can they bear it? How can they go on? Of course they must, because they have two other children.

But as Gerry rightly says, these wilful, determined, downright nasty efforts to blame them, shifts the onus from whoever took their daughter and is wholly responsible for whatever happened to Madeleine.

We’ve seen it before.

It’s a pattern.

A Baby P dies and we round on the social workers – which allows those who committed the crime to become, almost, secondary to the story.

Nor do I understand anyone who says the McCanns should more or less just shut up and go away. If it was my child, YOUR child, you would never give up searching for them, would you, not least when other lost children have eventually been found?

Anyone who denies that fact must be totally lacking in both compassion and imagination – or kids.

The charge, that other children from less affluent homes have gone missing and no one seems to give a damn about them, is irrelevant.

It’s also wrong.

In this country, a child disappears, and no matter whether their parents are middle class professionals such as the McCanns or, like Shannon Matthews – who was eventually found under a bed belonging to her mother’s boyfriend – from a dysfunctional family, the police pull out every stop.

They do not judge on the basis of class or background. A missing child is a missing child.

It should also be remembered that if Madeleine was targeted and snatched by a gang as some have theorised, then there will be other Madeleines and it is in ALL our interests that such people are caught and brought to justice.

But for the McCanns, the agony is ever-present and in their every waking moment.

Madeleine was, IS, their beloved daughter.

Their guilt and their grief will go on until they take their last breath.

How could it be otherwise?

And what right does anyone have to add to that grief and guilt?

I can only wish that, finally, they WILL find her and that in the meantime their other children remain safe, well and loved. As Madeleine was and remains loved.

There is NO similarity between Denise Bulger momentarily losing sight of James and the McCanns neglecting their children night after night to go out on the lash.

Or – hands up – me, bunging my six-month-old baby in her pram in the garden and asking a neighbour to keep an ear out for her while I went off to the supermarket … and finding a cat almost suffocating her when I got back.

"Or – hands up – me, bunging my six-month-old baby in her pram in the garden and asking a neighbour to keep an ear out for her while I went off to the supermarket … and finding a cat almost suffocating her when I got back."

And let me guess! Did you do it the next day as well? No, thought not! Cos YOU learnt your lesson! Why did they not, when they were told by their daughter that she had cried for them the night before?? (If you believe this story actually happened, I don't)And its not just people on the internet who don't believe a word of it. They are just the people speaking out, ask in any shop or office, you'll get the same kind of response as the "ghoulish e-crew".READ THE FILES, THEN COME BACK AND TELL US WHAT YOU THINK!

These type of articles are used in place of Moroccon type sightings to get the masses debating parenting skills, and kick start the poor MCCanns have been tortured enough, they have paid the price blah blah discussions. Much better than having Joe public discussing Crimewatch, googling Smith statements or god forbid the PJ files. No, keep them on the neglect trail. Neglect, neglect, neglect. Whatever it was in May 2007, it was big.

Only a complete moron would think it is ok to leave two babies and a toddler alone to go drinking and it takes an even bigger moron to put those thoughts into print for the world to read. Only scum would dare to put the Bulger name in an article such as this. There is no lengths some will go to.

Oh, Joan Burnie is a daft old bint in the mould of Lorraine Kelly, who has been foisted upon us for years. Can't find a single person who can stomach the skelly auld trout, goodness knows why she's a "celebrity" and why anybody pays a blind bit of notice. She wouldn't recognise a troll if it jumped up and bit her on her large and wrinkly arse. Don't even bother yourselves giving her the oxygen of publicity, she's not worth it. Remember one of Gerry's pals is a sub editor at the Daily Record so it's no surprise that they print sycophantic shite all the time.

kitti wrote:Apparently Bens dad has been on tv ask WHY are the mccanns getting all this help when his son doesn't get the same,

You know what makes me so cross kitti ? It is bad enough that all of that money is being channelled into one missing child while the likes of Bens family sit by the sideline, but they rub salt in the wounds by pussy footing around, leaving everybody wondering will they / won't they solve the case. Not because its the biggest mystery in the universe but because nobody can say with any degree of certainty Redwood and company have the balls they were born with.

They are peeing down people's backs and telling us its raining. That Redwood is working to some secret mandate is not good enough either, he and his team can do something, they can object to their hands being tied.

Five million spent and they are using e-fits prepared by some dubious private investigation firm employed by the man who a witness has identified as being the main person of interest. There's your Crimewatch up date in one sentance.

Please Joan Burnie I am not a troll and I don't think any of us are. I am 71 and have just used my common sense to work out what probably happened in Portugal. A little girl disappeared - if you can give us some evidence she was abducted then I will hold my hands up and say, yes, I am a cynical troll.

Just who is this very stupid woman? Whoever she is she needs to stop presuming that we all dump our kids anywhere and on anybody. Obviously the silly woman isn't aware of the very many dangers facing small children left alone for even a minute or two, never mind half an hour or longer. Perhaps its something she herself has done but she can't tar everyone with her own brush.

mara thon wrote:Just who is this very stupid woman? Whoever she is she needs to stop presuming that we all dump our kids anywhere and on anybody. Obviously the silly woman isn't aware of the very many dangers facing small children left alone for even a minute or two, never mind half an hour or longer. Perhaps its something she herself has done but she can't tar everyone with her own brush.

She describes herself as 'The most evil woman in Britain,' with some good cause, stating Paula Yates would have considered "cosy" three-way sex with Hutchence and her teenage daughter. Paula Yates died of an accidental overdose in 2000, but Burnie still does not regret writing the article. Yet she considers herself a fit person to critcise others who voice their opinion of blatant child neglectors...

But, she's right, she is an evil, sycophantic, hypocritical, old witch...

What a stupid cow this woman is, leaving her baby in the yard while she goes to the shops i dont think so. And how dare she blame James Bulgers mother for him wondering off and being abductered the woman is attention seeking and trying to make a name for her self. I am not a troll either i'm a 59 year old woman who knows if it looks like shit, smells like shit it is shit, just like her article

Many years ago when I was young - that's my excuse - I used to read the Daily Mail every day. I particularly liked Lynda Lee-Potter who had a column on Wednesdays. She's dead now but I can just imagine the sick fests she would have produced about the McCanns.

Not Born Yesterday

Platinum Poster

Number of posts : 6715Age : 104Location : Over the hills and far awayWarning :

Dining a "few short yards away". WTF ! If they'd spotted smoke coming out of 5A there's no way the McCanns could have got back to the apartment in time. I've definitely done things I wish I hadn't when I had a toddler, but leaving them on their own in strange surroundings whilst I dined in a bar with friends wasn't of them.